The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac

Also by Jeffry D. Wert

Gettysburg: Day Three

A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall

Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A.

Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer

General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most

Controversial Soldier—A Biography

Mosby’s Rangers

From Winchester to Cedar Creek: The Shenandoah Valley

Campaign of 1864

SIMON & SCHUSTER

Rockefeller Center

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2005 by Jeffry D.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

DESIGNED BY PAUL DIPPOLITO

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wert, Jeffry D.

The sword of Lincoln : the Army of the Potomac / Jeffry D. Wert.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

1. United States. Army of the Potomac. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. I. Title.

E470.2.W46 2005

973.7’41—dc22

2004058467

ISBN-10: 0-7432-7192-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7192-9

Visit us on the World Wide Web:

http://www.SimonSays.com

To Gloria,

with love

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Things Look Very Mutch Like War

Chapter Two: Bloody Sabbath at Bull Run

Chapter Three: An Army Born

Chapter Four: To the Peninsula

Chapter Five: Along the Chickahominy

Chapter Six: If We Were Defeated, the Army and the Country Would Be Lost

Chapter Seven: McClellan Has the Army with Him

Chapter Eight: Behold, a Pale Horse

Chapter Nine: The Army’s Saddest Hour

Chapter Ten: Winter of Transition

Chapter Eleven: God Almighty Could Not Prevent Me from Winning a Victory

Chapter Twelve: Big Fight Some Wears Ahead

Chapter Thirteen: An Army of Lions

Chapter Fourteen: Virginia Interlude

Chapter Fifteen: This War Is Horrid

Chapter Sixteen: A Sit Down Before the Wall of Petersburg

Chapter Seventeen: I Never Seen a Crazier Set of Fellows

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface and Acknowledgments

A rough-cut granite monument, with a bronze tablet, stands today, like a lonely sentry at its post, in the small central Pennsylvania village of Rebersburg. It commemorates a day in August 1862, when seventy-eight men stood in Rebersburg’s main street and took an oath of allegiance to the United States of America. The bronze tablet lists their names and the names of others who followed later into the army. Before long, the original volunteers formed Company A, 148th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

There are many grander, more imposing Civil War monuments throughout the country. Few, if any, such memorials have meant more to me. A typical small Pennsylvania village, nestled in a narrow valley, Rebersburg was my hometown. As a boy, I read the names on the tablet, knew the ones who were family, visited their graves in the cemetery, and sat in the room where they held their monthly Grand Army of the Republic meetings. I understood little at the time, except that they seemed heroic to me.

It has been more than half a century since that time. With members from the other companies in the regiment, the 148th compiled an excellent unit history. On its cover is a red trefoil, denoting the regiment’s service in the First Division, Second Corps, Army of the Potomac. The 148th was justly proud of its membership in the command. These soldiers had stood in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg, at the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania, before the trenches at Cold Harbor, and on the final road at Appomattox.

Youthful memories recur. Mine have led me, as a historian, to the writing of this book. The story of the men of the 148th Pennsylvania and their comrades in the Army of the Potomac deserves a retelling. This book is not a detailed account of battles and campaigns. Other historians and scholars have written excellent, modern, and thorough works on the major engagements in the East. My book is more a study, based upon several major themes. It does, however, cover the army’s entire story, from its early formative days to the last hours at Appomattox.

Created to defend Washington, D.C., the Army of the Potomac operated within the capital’s looming shadow. The Northern populace focused its attention upon the army’s successes and failures on a battle-field. In many ways, its fortunes defined the fortunes of Abraham Lincoln and his administration. No American army has been so closely identified with a president nor have any other army’s operations been so intertwined with politics. Lincoln’s relationship with the army and the impact of politics upon its operations comprise a major theme of this book.

The men who led the army remain some of the most controversial generals in American history. In the hands of Irvin McDowell, George B. McClellan, Ambrose E. Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George G. Meade, the army compiled a record of more defeats than victories. The army’s senior leadership was cursed with internal dissension, political intrigue, and ineptness at times. My book reexamines the army’s leadership, from army command to corps, division, brigade, and regimental command.

An integral part of my narrative is the morale and attitudes of the common soldiers. Despite the frequent blunders of their commanders, the army’s rank and file fought with a valor worthy of any army. I have allowed them to speak for themselves, for their words convey an immediacy that transcends time. It has been argued that a defeatism afflicted the army as it faced Robert E. Lee and the magnificent Army of Northern Virginia. I have found that not to be accurate, at least among the soldiers who bore the greatest sacrifice.

I have integrated the best of modern scholarship with primary sources. My interpretations and conclusions will differ from others’, but history abounds with disagreement. The story of the Army of the Potomac deserves a recounting. History is always more than words cast on metal or sculpted in stone.

Any work of history results from the collective efforts of individuals. To them, I extend my deepest appreciation and gratitude. Their assistance, knowledge, and insight have made this a better book. All errors are solely, however, the responsibility of the author.

I wish to thank the archivists and librarians at the institutions cited in the bibliography for their unfailing patience and understanding.

Other individuals merit my particular gratitude and recognition:

Dr. Richard Sommers, Head of Patron Services and an incomparable source for manuscript material, and his excellent staff, United States Army Military History Institute; Julie Holcomb, archivist, Pearce Civil War Collection, Navarro College; interlibrary loan staff, Centre County (Pennsylvania) Library; and James Quigle, Head of Archives and Special Collections, Pattee-Paterno Library, Pennsylvania State University.

Russ and Budge Weidman, friends and fellow Civil War buffs, for their generosity, kindness, and assistance and sharing their home with me on a research trip to Washington, D.C.

Mary Lou and Blair Pavlik, fellow students of the Civil War, for sharing with me the letters of George Bronson.

Ted Alexander, Chief Historian, Antietam National Battlefield, and trusted friend, for reading my chapter on Antietam and offering his acute comments.

David Ward, a friend and fellow historian, for reading portions of the manuscript, sharing material with me, and challenging my conclusions.

Daniel Laney, a proud Texan, Civil War historian and preservationist, president of the Austin Civil War Round Table, and a cherished family friend, for reading the entire manuscript, editing passages, and reminding me constantly of the merits of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Nicholas Picerno, Sr., an avid Civil War collector, authority on the 1st, 10th, and 29th Maine, and a longtime and deeply valued family friend, for sharing items from his superb collection and for reading my Antietam chapter.

Robert Gottlieb, President, Trident Media Group and my agent, for all of his efforts on my behalf.

Bob Bender, my editor, for his unwavering counsel, expertise, and friendship; and Johanna Li, associate editor, for her constant kindness, assistance, and patience; and Fred Chase, copy editor, for his fine work.

Our son, Jason Wert, our daughter-in-law, Kathy Neese Wert, our grandchildren, Rachel and Gabriel Wert, our daughter, Natalie Wert Corman, and our son-in-law, Grant Corman, for their cherished love and support.

My wife, Gloria, without whom none of my work as a historian would be possible. Her love and devotion has sustained me and enriched my life beyond words. For these reasons and more, this book is dedicated to her.

Jeffry D. Wert

Centre Hall, Pennsylvania

March 25, 2004

Chapter 1

Things Look Very Mutch Like War

HENRY L. MARTIN walked the streets of Washington, D.C., loitered at saloons, listened to rumors, and made calculations. To an observer, the nation’s capital throbbed with excitement and activity as the reality of civil war seemed at its doorstep. Volunteers from nearly every Northern state spilled out of railroad cars, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the cheers of onlookers, and filled nearly every parcel of open ground with their campsites. It appeared as if the spring rains had brought forth gardens of white tents.

For a man like Martin, Washington was a good place to be during the months of April, May, and June 1861. A Southern sympathizer, if not a hired spy, who used the pseudonym D. L. Dalton, Martin gathered information and forwarded it to Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia. In a letter to Davis, dated June 29, Martin estimated the number of troops in the district and across the Potomac River in Virginia at 80,000. He noted that the cry, still they come, echoed from residents as more new regiments arrived.

Martin assured the Confederate president, however, that except for three or four regiments, the volunteer soldiers are of the very dregs of creation, collected from cities. Their officers were generally Sunday militia types, who knew little or nothing about their duties. He claimed that Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott did not trust the volunteers to stand and fight in an engagement, adding that the old warrior suffered from lumbago and could conduct meetings only while lying on a couch.¹

There were others in the capital who shared Martin’s sympathies and passed enciphered messages south to Richmond. Federal officers and government officials talked freely at parties and in barrooms about military matters. Astute listeners could collect a mass of information and funnel it through an amateurish spy network. They gleaned valuable details, and probably like Martin, submitted erroneous intelligence.²

Some things were, however, beyond these informants’ knowledge and understanding. Perhaps most of them shared Martin’s dim assessment of the volunteers. There were in each regiment unsavory individuals, maybe even the very dregs of creation, collected from cities. But more of them were ordinary farm boys and laborers than citified clerks. Home meant more than just New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. It meant villages and farmsteads in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.³

They were awkward on drill fields, rowdy in camps and on city streets, attired in a kaleidoscope of multicolored, ill-fitting uniforms, and spoke in various languages. They reflected the North’s increasing diversity and its woeful militia system. As Martin accurately reported, Scott and fellow Regular Army officers despaired over the prospects of leading them into battle.⁴

Beneath the outward appearances, however, lay something deeper of inestimable value. Many had volunteered because of the excitement of the times, the lure of adventure, and the prospect of earning money. But most came forth from a sense of duty and a devotion to their country—a simple idealism. These motives would sustain most of them during the many dark months and years ahead.⁵

With thousands of others, a Wisconsin volunteer explained to his parents, I was so much excited at the thought of treason breaking out in our Old Union that I thought nothing but to be if possible the first to enroll my name amongst those of her defenders. A New Jersey man wrote home that Southerners had insulted our flag and we must in sult thers, vowing that he intended to stand by the Union and constitution of the states. If I fall, wrote another soldier in words shared by many of his comrades, I die in defence of the Flag I was born under and which I will die under.⁶

Whatever their motivations they had come forth in response to a call from the president of the United States. When they arrived in Washington, Abraham Lincoln welcomed them, stood on the rear portico of the White House, watching them parade past, and visited them in their camps. A tall man, he seemed as awkward as they were, as rough at being president in this crisis as they were at being soldiers. Like them, he understood what was at risk and would draw upon those beliefs time and again. They shared a resiliency, as yet unformed, that would sustain them and their cause through the long passage ahead. He would give definition in words to the struggle. They would give it in blood.⁷

Here, then, was the beginning. While tens of thousands of other Union volunteers flooded camps across the country, these men in the capital formed the nucleus of America’s most star-crossed army. They would be cursed, even damned, with the burdens of defending Washington, inept leadership, and a splendid opponent. Many thousands more were destined to join them, to know more defeats than victories, but finally to prevail. With them through it all was Lincoln, for if any army in the nation’s history belonged to a president, it would be theirs. They numbered neither 80,000 yet nor were they the very dregs of creation. In time, they would be the sword of Lincoln, the Army of the Potomac.

WE ARE LIVING A MONTH of common life every day, recorded a New York City diarist on April 18, 1861. It did, indeed, seem as if people and events were being swept along by a fearful gale. Less than a week had passed since Confederate artillerists had opened fire on Fort Sumter, at Charleston, South Carolina, pounding the garrison into surrender two days later. On April 17, Virginia seceded, to be followed in days and weeks by three more Southern states. The new Confederate States of America would soon have eleven members, with its capital located in Richmond, Virginia, only a hundred miles south of Washington, D.C.⁸

Abraham Lincoln reacted to the outbreak of hostilities by asking loyal states for 75,000 ninety-day volunteers to suppress the rebellion. The president had little choice, as the Regular Army numbered barely more than 16,000, with garrisons scattered in coastal forts in the East and in frontier outposts from Washington Territory to Texas in the West. Nearly forty percent of army officers either had resigned their commissions or would do so to join the Confederacy.⁹

The burden of mobilization fell upon Northern governors. In each state the executives had to rely initially upon militia companies. Unfortunately, in nearly every state, the militia had been neglected for decades. Monthly musters of companies had amounted to little more than social gatherings. Mars on a holiday in the country, whopping and spitting powder and rum, as a Maine civilian described his local company’s mock battle. The rum kegs in the country grocery there were exhaustless. Connecticut’s militia system was a laughing stock for thirty years. Americans had been comfortable with the myth of the Revolutionary War minuteman.¹⁰

Well-armed and well-drilled militia units existed, and they were among the first to respond to Lincoln’s proclamation. Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew had begun supplying his state’s units with arms and ordering daily drills since January. Consequently, by the evening of April 15, four regiments had received instructions to report to Boston. They left the city for Washington two days later. In Pennsylvania, Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin had five companies, so-called First Defenders, on trains for the national capital on April 18. On that same day, the state commandeered the Dauphin County Agricultural Fairgrounds in Harrisburg for a training site, renaming it Camp Curtin.¹¹

The security of Washington was the immediate priority of the Lincoln administration. With Virginia out of the union and with slaveholding Maryland’s future course uncertain, the capital could be isolated. Only six weakly manned forts guarded the city. From the conflict’s earliest days, the defense of the capital became paramount.¹²

Senator James Lane’s Frontier Guard of 120 Kansas volunteers offered its services first to the government. Winfield Scott designated them as the president’s bodyguard, billeting them in the East Room of the White House. On April 18, Pennsylvania’s First Defenders arrived, followed the next day by the 6th Massachusetts. A mob had attacked the Massachusetts troops as they marched between railroad stations in Baltimore. Lincoln then decided to bypass Baltimore and detoured units to Annapolis, which troops occupied on April 21. By month’s end, additional regiments from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island had reached either Washington or Annapolis, bringing the total to 11,000 men.¹³

Behind these units, thousands more recruits were filling state camps or were en route to the capital. The firing on Fort Sumter had galvanized the North. Change in public feeling marked, New Yorker George Templeton Strong wrote in his diary on April 15, and a thing to thank God for. We begin to look like a United North. Strong believed a flag decorated every New York City cart horse. When the 7th New York marched down Broadway on the way to Washington, the roar of the crowd was grand and terrible. From New England to Wisconsin, citizens gathered in war meetings, enrolling recruits and signing pledges of support.¹⁴

The flood of volunteers overwhelmed state authorities. More than 13,000 New Yorkers filled seventeen regiments in response to Lincoln’s proclamation, while nearly 21,000 Pennsylvanians enlisted in twenty-five regiments. Governors deluged the War Department for advice and assistance. On May 3, without legal authority, Lincoln asked for 42,034 volunteers to be mustered in for three years. Secretary of War Simon Cameron advised governors to accept only three-year units. Although New York authorities specified a two-year term of service for thirty-eight regiments, most governors complied with Cameron’s request.¹⁵

So they came, piling onto steamers at New York City and Boston, and crowding into railroad cars from Maine to Minnesota. A New Yorker admitted that he and his comrades had a rough old time on board a ship, but being all for glory, we are in high spirits. For those on trains, a few units rode first class, while many traveled inside filthy livestock and freight cars. Hardships could not dampen their enthusiasm. Many were confident that the war would last but for a few months, stated a Wisconsin volunteer, and none anticipated remaining more than a year away from those happy homes to which so many were destined never to return.¹⁶

WASHINGTON, D.C., RAPIDLY assumed the appearance of an armed camp. Private James B. Flynn of the 3rd New Jersey wrote home in mid-May, things look very mutch like war here but there is so mutch military that it cant look other ways. In another letter he asserted, I never would have thought their was as many tents in the United States as there is around our encampment. Campsites filled public grounds, and regiments bivouacked in the Capitol and at the Navy Yard. Soldiers lounged and slept in the House and Senate chambers, while flour barrels lined the hallways for a bakery in the basement.¹⁷

When the newcomers had an opportunity, they roamed the streets as sightseers. They visited the White House, Capitol, Smithsonian, and Patent Office and were impressed. Washington is the prettiest place in the World, Private Flynn told his parents. The Capitol is beyond the possibility of description, claimed a Pennsylvania chaplain. They had enlisted to save the constitution and the union, and before them were the imposing symbols, fashioned from granite, marble, and brick.¹⁸

A few of the soldiers found little, except for the public edifices, appealing about the city. One volunteer used a common expression of the time to describe it, just no place at all. A lieutenant thought that Washington resembled "a half grown tree withered by the premature extraction of sap. A private could not believe that hogs run around the street just like dogs."¹⁹

It was a colorful and diverse lot who roamed through the city. A civilian described the variety of uniforms as a queer medley of costumes. Men dressed in the common blue pants and coats passed members of the 79th New York or Cameron Highlanders, resplendent in tartan trews and Glengarry caps. Most colorful were the Zouave regiments, attired in variations of the French-style baggy red pants, blue jackets, and red fezzes. Vermonters wore state-issued gray uniforms, with green facings in honor of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. By contrast, volunteers in the 1st Minnesota had poorly made uniforms that had become threadbare and shrunken, while soldiers in the 4th Pennsylvania were reportedly the worst clothed troops that Pennsylvania had sent to the field.²⁰

Although native-born Americans comprised a majority of the volunteers, a number of regiments reflected the increasing polyglot nature of Northern society. Units raised in metropolitan areas generally filled their ranks from ethnic groups. No regiment typified this diversity more than the 39th New York or Garibaldi Guards, which had at least a dozen European nationalities and South Americans in its companies. Two regiments—the 9th Massachusetts and 69th New York—were primarily composed of Irishmen, who proudly carried green flags in honor of their homeland. Although the Irish had opposed Lincoln’s election, allegiance to the Union, endorsed by the Catholic Church, brought them by the thousands into the army. With Germans, they formed the largest contingents of foreign-born troops.²¹

Regardless of their motivations, the color and cut of their uniforms, and their ethnic heritage, the volunteers enjoyed soldiering. The novelty of the experience had appeal. A Massachusetts recruit stated that he and his comrades liked the kind of life that the army offered, especially the camaraderie in the camps. We had everything an Irishman needs to make him happy, boasted a member of the 69th New York, not the least of which is some good ‘old rye.’ When Germans in the 5th New York State Militia established their campsite, they had a lager beer cart going in about an hour. The volunteers seemed to take to nearly everything, except discipline. They were neither an army in name nor in fact.²²

BREVET LIEUTENANT GENERAL Winfield Scott had been the foremost soldier in the land, a hero of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. At six feet, five inches tall, he had towered physically and figuratively over the Regular Army. But in the spring of 1861, he was seventy-four years old, more ancient than the capital, his once magnificent frame reduced to a worn hulk by time and obesity. He neither could mount a horse unaided nor work long hours. He was proud and vain—Old Fuss and Feathers to his troops—but he still possessed a brilliant mind and a grim-eyed view of the impending nightmare. As Lincoln’s chief military advisor, he predicted that it would require three years and incalculable manpower to suppress the rebellion.²³

A native Virginian, Scott had an unbending loyalty to the Union. I have served my country, under the flag of the Union, for more than fifty years, he stated. I will defend that flag with my sword, even if my native State assails it. He and fellow Regular Army officers denigrated the fighting qualities of the enthusiastic volunteers. Time and training, Scott cautioned, would be needed before they could be fashioned into soldiers and sent forth into combat. His object, confided Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles of Scott, seemed to be to avoid hostilities.²⁴

The general’s judgment was prudent. Carriage tours of camps—He was a grim old giant, gorgeously appareled, wrote a sergeant of Scott—and reports from subordinates confirmed his assessment of the rawness and ill-discipline of the capital’s new defenders. An army had to be created, and days of drill commenced.²⁵

Although Lincoln and Scott enjoyed an excellent relationship, conferring often, usually at the general’s residence, the president went against the general-in-chief’s advice and appointed Major Irvin McDowell to brigadier general on May 14, with the intent of assigning him to command of the troops in the district. Scott had recommended fifty-seven-year-old Joseph K. F. Mansfield for the post. Secretary of War Cameron, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Ohio governor William Dennison had lobbied for McDowell, a forty-two-year-old Ohioan. When Scott learned of Lincoln’s decision, he sent staff officers to McDowell to ask him to decline the appointment. McDowell refused.²⁶

McDowell’s selection was a surprise. Perhaps, despite Scott’s endorsement, Lincoln considered Mansfield too old for field command of an army. As Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs, quartermaster general of the United States and a close advisor of the president, told his father, No one in the army would have selected him [McDowell] as the first officer to be made a general. A West Point graduate and career staff officer, McDowell had never led even a company of troops in combat. When the war began, he was an assistant adjutant general on Scott’s staff, with the task of mustering in and inspecting the volunteer regiments.²⁷

The brigadier was an oddly proportioned man physically. He had a large body propped up by short legs. Although he did not drink coffee, tea, or alcohol, McDowell possessed a gargantuan appetite for food. Meigs described him as fat, and another officer claimed he had all the distinctive appearance of a marshal of the First Empire of Napoleon. He spoke fluent French and enjoyed architecture, landscape gardening, and dancing waltzes.²⁸

Secretary Chase confessed that McDowell could be indifferent in manner to other people. A staff officer who knew him well remarked, he imagined himself on a higher plane than ordinary mortals. He was pompous, ill-tempered, opinionated, and punctilious. At his worst, McDowell could be arrogant and arbitrary. His own popularity mattered little to him. What he knew of war, he had acquired mostly from books. While Meigs thought him to be a good, brave man, he also regarded him as commonplace.²⁹

In the predawn darkness of May 24, hours after Virginians had approved their convention’s ordinance of secession, thousands of Federal troops crossed the Potomac River into the Old Dominion. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth’s 11th New York Fire Zouaves led the advance into Alexandria. A magnetic officer, the twenty-four-year-old Ellsworth had clerked in Lincoln’s law office, and the president thought of him as almost another son. When the colonel saw a secessionist flag on the roof of the Marshall House, he entered the hotel, ascended the stairs, and tore it down. As he returned, the hotelkeeper met him with a shotgun and killed him. His death deeply grieved Lincoln, who held funeral ceremonies in the White House. The cause of the Union had its first martyr.³⁰

The regiments in the operation belonged to the Department of Washington, now commanded by Mansfield. Additional units followed into Virginia. On May 27, the administration created the Department of Northeastern Virginia, which consisted of the portion of the Old Dominion east of the Allegheny Mountains and north of the James River. Lincoln assigned McDowell to command of it. The next day the general established his headquarters in Arlington, at the former home of Robert E. Lee. Weeks earlier, Lee had rejected an offer to command the Union army at the capital, resigned his commission, and volunteered his services to his native Virginia. In time, Lee would become the Confederacy’s greatest general, and the Federals’ nemesis in the East.³¹

McDowell immediately organized the regiments into three brigades. During the next six weeks, as more regiments arrived in Washington and were assigned to his department, he created additional brigades. By July 8, he had thirteen brigades assigned to five divisions, numbering more than 30,000 troops. McDowell now commanded the largest army in American history.³²

The division and brigade commanders were mainly Regular Army officers, recommended by Scott and McDowell. The majority had graduated from West Point, men who possessed a professional’s habit of mind, which citizen soldiers lacked. A primary factor in their appointment, however, was a simple matter—they were at hand. They were either on duty in Washington when the war began or arrived later at the head of a volunteer regiment. Lincoln selected three of them, basing his decision on political considerations or personal association. Five of the sixteen would be destined for corps command, three for army command, and only one, William T. Sherman, for greatness.³³

The division commanders were Daniel Tyler, David Hunter, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Dixon S. Miles, and Theodore Runyon. As a group, they were an uninspiring lot. Although he still looked like a soldier, Tyler was sixty-two years old and had been out of the army for almost thirty years. Hunter had ingratiated himself to Lincoln by corresponding with the president-elect during the winter of 1861, and received an invitation to the inauguration. With an undistinguished record, he was available and was appointed by Lincoln. Miles and Runyon would play minor roles in the operations. Except for Heintzelman, the division commanders’ association with the army would end after the forthcoming campaign.³⁴

Heintzelman had spent his entire career in the army, distinguishing himself in Mexico and on the frontier. A grizzled and gnarled old customer, he was army to the bone. He could be blunt in speech and unbending in discipline. He had the spirit of a warrior but lacked dash. An officer who met him in April confided in his diary, I was much disappointed in him; could not see any signs of a great man.³⁵

Several of the brigade commanders, however, would share the army’s fortunes on future battlefields and would obtain higher rank and responsibility. To a man, they were West Pointers, but only one of them, Israel B. Richardson, had led troops in combat. Four of them—Richardson, Ambrose E. Burnside, Oliver Otis Howard, and Orlando B. Willcox—had left the army to pursue civilian opportunities and returned to service as colonels of volunteer regiments. William B. Franklin and Erasmus D. Keyes had been career staff officers, highly regarded by their superiors. But the best of the group, William Sherman, would be assigned to the West in September.³⁶

McDowell completed the organization of his army by the second week of July. His units covered Arlington and Alexandria, with picket posts shoved west along the roads toward Centreville and Manassas Junction, where a Confederate force had been growing in strength since early May. At Manassas, the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Orange & Alexandria Railroad intersected. If the 18,000 Confederates, under Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, could hold the junction, they could keep the Federals from advancing into the state’s interior. To the west, across the Blue Ridge, Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston’s 11,000 men defended the Shenandoah Valley.³⁷

At the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley stood an 18,000-man Union army, led by Major General Robert Patterson. A veteran of the War of 1812 and Scott’s second-in-command in Mexico, the sixty-nine-year-old Patterson had been appointed to the command of the Department of Pennsylvania by his old friend shortly after Fort Sumter. His command consisted primarily of Pennsylvania regiments, whose duty was to guard western Maryland and protect the Keystone State. When the Confederates withdrew from Harper’s Ferry in mid-June, Patterson sent his troops across the Potomac River and occupied the historic town. Long past his prime, Patterson seemed befuddled by the burdens of command.³⁸

With Beauregard’s command less than thirty miles from Washington, and its advanced detachments even closer, pressure mounted on McDowell to act. Although Scott believed that a Virginia campaign would be a mistake, he asked McDowell for a plan of advance in cooperation with Patterson on Leesburg. McDowell was, wrote his chief of staff, dominated by the feeling of subordination and deference to General Scott which at that time pervaded the whole army. Nevertheless, McDowell countered with a proposal for a move against Beauregard at Manassas.³⁹

Lincoln, meanwhile, intervened. The clamor for action among the Northern people had been escalating since a New York Tribune headline proclaimed, Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! on June 24. Other newspapers picked up the call, editorializing that the Confederate Congress should not be allowed to meet in Richmond on July 20. If the administration waited much longer to act against the Confederates, the terms of enlistment of ninety-day militia units would expire. To Lincoln, the Federals must strike, both for military and political reasons.⁴⁰

On June 29, the president met with the Cabinet, Scott, McDowell, and several generals. The discussion centered upon a movement by McDowell against the enemy at Manassas. The meeting crystallized at this early stage in the conflict the issues that would plague the Union’s overall military strategy throughout much of the war. In a democracy at war with itself, politics would never be far removed from the battlefields.⁴¹

For weeks Scott had warned against a hasty offensive into Confederate territory with untrained troops and inexperienced officers. He had advocated a naval blockade of Confederate ports—which the president had implemented in his April 15 proclamation—and a concentration of Union might to seize the Mississippi River to split the Confederacy. The Federals should not undertake any major offensives into the Southern heartland, including Virginia. This, reasoned Scott, would minimize casualties on both sides and expedite reconciliation between the sections. Although the commanding general had predicted a lengthy conflict, he now argued that the war could be won by the summer of 1862. He believed, however, that his strategy would be politically unpopular in the North, stating that pro-Union voices will urge instant and vigorous action, regardless, I fear, of consequences.⁴²

McDowell shared Scott’s concern about a strike against the Confederates with untrained troops and inexperienced officers. When he noted these matters at the meeting, Lincoln replied: You are green. But they are green too. You are all green alike. McDowell also expressed his doubts about whether Patterson would act aggressively to keep Johnston’s Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley and to prevent the Confederate general from reinforcing Beauregard at Manassas. In the end, Lincoln decided that they could not wait and ordered the forward movement. Without asking McDowell when he could advance, Scott designated July 8 as the date. But McDowell needed more time, and it would be more than a week later before the army marched.⁴³

IF EVER I GET A CHANCE to draw sight on a Rebel down goes his shanty, a 2nd Wisconsin corporal bragged to his brother. Many of his comrades shared his boast. There was an itch among the rank and file to meet the enemy and to settle the matter in one battle. As government officials and generals discussed strategy, soldiers bided their time with daily drills and camp chores. When on picket duty, they slept in their uniforms—We don’t calculate to be taken by surprize, remarked one of them. Daily skirmishes ignited between them and their opponents. It was not enough, however, to stop the itch.⁴⁴

Sickness reduced their ranks, and drunkenness weakened discipline. I found the Army with which we were to meet the enemy, reported a veteran army surgeon, composed of the best, and also of the worst, material I had ever met with. Since the regiments had been hastily collected, many of the volunteers had not received medical examinations upon enlistment. The summer heat, foul water, and unkempt camps sent hundreds of men on sick call or into hospitals.⁴⁵

Both officers and men sought relief from duties with alcohol. Sergeant Andrew McClintock of the 1st Connecticut stated that the number of drunks in his regiment put the unit in a very bad condition. The men, McClintock asserted, are nearly all disheartened. They have lost nearly all the patriotism that should animate the Citizen Soldier.⁴⁶

McDowell ordered frequent reviews of individual regiments and of brigades. Lincoln attended many of the parades and demonstrations. On one occasion, the 39th New York or Garibaldi Guards tossed flowers to the president, having plucked them from civilian gardens before the review. One soldier described a march down Pennsylvania Avenue, with Lincoln, Scott, and Cabinet members watching, as a festive atmosphere.⁴⁷

In fact, the president remained a nearly constant presence among the troops during this time. An acquaintance of Lincoln’s remembered him as eminently human, and the soldiers saw this in him. An officer recounted an incident when a boy came by with a pail of water for us, and the President took a great swig from it as it passed. In another letter, the lieutenant wrote about Lincoln: It is easy to see why he is so popular with all who come in contact with him. He gives you the impression of being a gentleman.⁴⁸

It was the president’s common touch that struck the men in the ranks. His reported homeliness elicited comments. A Massachusetts lieutenant thought that he is ten times a homlier man than I expected he was, while another officer argued, It is really too bad to call him one of the ugliest men in the country for I have seldom seen a pleasanter or more kind-hearted looking one and he has certainly a very striking face. In these early weeks, then, for many reasons, Lincoln established a bond with the common soldiers that would endure through the horrific tests to come. He cared about them and their welfare, seemed to be like them, whether watching them pass in review or sharing a drink with them from a pail of water.⁴⁹

It fell to him, finally, to order them forth into battle. He knew they were green, listened to the reports of their illnesses and discipline problems, but he and the country needed them to meet the enemy. It was what most of them also wanted, believing that the Union must be saved. Upon them a legacy had been bequeathed.

I KNOW HOW STRONGLY American civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, an officer, Sullivan Ballou, explained to his wife, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. He warned her that he might be killed in the forthcoming battle, but he assured her, I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt. Within a week, Ballou would perish in the battle, fulfilling his share of the debt.⁵⁰

A private in the 38th New York offered a similar view to his parents. Don’t feel sorry that one of your sons enlisted in this struggle for our rights and the rights of our forefathers who died for their country and made it free and now we are duty bound to protect it and keep it free, for without Union there cannot be Peace so down with Secession.⁵¹

Many, if not most, of them saw the approaching engagement as Sergeant Frank L. Lemont, a Maine volunteer, did. It is generally believed that the contest will be a short and decisive one, Lemont assured his mother. It is thought that it will be a comparatively bloodless one. They were, indeed, green.⁵²

Chapter 2

Bloody Sabbath at Bull Run

BANDS PLAYED PATRIOTIC SONGS as Brigadier General Irvin McDowell’s Union army marched forth under a brilliant afternoon sun on July 16, 1861. They moved in three long columns, heading toward Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard’s Confederate troops, deployed behind Bull Run, roughly twenty-five miles southwest of Washington. The inexperience of the Federal officers and men slowed the pace. The day passed without incident until gunfire exploded near Fairfax Station. A brigade rushed to the scene, only to find the 39th New York shooting a farmer’s flock of turkeys. In front of each column, Rebel pickets nipped at the Yankees and then fled.¹

The advance resumed at daylight on July 17. As the day lengthened, however, problems mounted. Felled trees blocked roads, stalling the march. Hundreds of men abandoned the ranks, either straggling or foraging into the countryside. A soldier had predicted a week earlier that "the boys are all anxious to get further south, where they can have a chance to forage without fear of trespassing upon unionists. I pity the country they pass through, for I fear they would be more destructive than the tornado that has just passed through the West." As they had done the day before, Southern pickets receded before the Union columns.²

McDowell designated Centreville as the army’s destination for July 18, which Brigadier General Daniel Tyler’s leading division reached at 9:00 A.M. Without seeking McDowell’s approval, Tyler ordered a reconnaissance of the Confederate position south of Bull Run. Colonel Israel B. Richardson’s brigade led the movement, halting at Blackburn’s Ford, where Brigadier General James Longstreet’s Southerners guarded the crossing. Tyler oversaw the deployment of two batteries and sent skirmishers from the 1st Massachusetts down the slope. Sporadic cannon fire and musketry characterized the action until Richardson ordered the 12th New York toward the ford.³

Israel Richardson looked more like a disheveled farmer who had strayed into the area to watch the combat than a brigade commander. A West Pointer and Mexican War veteran, he had been farming in Pontiac, Michigan, when the war began. The townsfolk had come to regard him as crazy because he was decidedly unsocial. When he helped organize the 2nd Michigan, Governor Austin Blair had reservations about giving him a commission. Orlando Willcox had known Richardson in the old army and assured Blair that the crazy man was as sound as a nut, but he was slouchly and slovenly. Willcox recommended him for the colonelcy, and the governor appointed him.⁴

A staff officer remembered Richardson as a man of great determination and courage, who dressed roughly and spoke and acted very brusquely. A private claimed that his men believed he was one of them, with his rough manners and utter lack of pretense. A firm disciplinarian, Richardson evidently had difficulty controlling the 2nd Michigan while en route to Washington. The volunteers raided stores at each stop along the railroad, stealing every thing movable. Telegraph operators wired ahead, warning merchants, who closed their businesses before the regiment arrived.⁵

When the 12th New York staggered before a volley and then fled to the rear, Richardson prepared to attack with his three other regiments. Although Colonel William Sherman’s brigade had arrived for support, Tyler had seen enough and stopped the advance. Richardson, who had been known as Fighting Dick, obeyed Tyler’s order but believed his and Sherman’s troops could have taken the ford. The Federals withdrew in good order under artillery fire. Casualties amounted to fewer than a hundred.⁶

Riding in a covered hackney coach and wearing a hat of a Kaiser, McDowell arrived at Centreville late in the afternoon. He learned of the affair at Blackburn’s Ford from Tyler, who claimed his division could whip the Rebels if allowed to renew the attacks. Upset with Tyler’s disobedience of orders, McDowell rejected the idea. The unauthorized reconnaissance confirmed reports that the Confederates were in force behind Bull Run and would oppose a crossing.⁷

While quartermasters replenished depleted supplies, Union commanders spent July 19 and most of the next day examining the Confederate position behind Bull Run. Warrenton Turnpike, the main road, crossed the stream at Stone Bridge. Six fords, all guarded by the Rebels, lay to the east, or downstream from the bridge. McDowell’s engineers, however, located an upstream ford at Sudley Church and a route to it during the reconnaissances. McDowell settled upon a turning movement beyond the Confederate left by Sudley Ford. Initially, he ordered the advance for 6:00 P.M., on July 20, but was dissuaded by his fellow generals, who cited the men’s need for rest. At eight o’clock that night, he met with his division and brigade commanders.⁸

The generals stood around a large table, in a great tent, lit by lanterns and candles, examining maps. Outside the tent, a group of civilians, including members of Congress, milled about. McDowell explained his offensive plan in detail but sought no opinions from his subordinates. Tyler’s division would lead the advance on Warrenton Turnpike, demonstrating against the enemy at Stone Bridge and the lower fords. Colonels David Hunter’s and Samuel Heintzelman’s divisions would follow Tyler’s, turn north before the bridge, cross Bull Run at Sudley Ford and a ford below it, and attack the Confederates. When they cleared Stone Bridge, Tyler would cross in support. The plan had merit, but McDowell overreached, relying upon novice officers and men, marching on cart paths at night, to reach their assigned positions in time.⁹

McDowell opened the council to questions, and a few of the generals, led by Tyler, voiced concern about the number of Confederate troops beyond Bull Run. They believed that Brigadier General Joseph Johnston’s command had arrived from the Shenandoah Valley and had joined Beauregard’s army. Before he had left Washington, Winfield Scott had assured McDowell that Major General Robert Patterson either would keep Johnston in the region or follow him east if he left the Valley. McDowell had received no information from the War Department that Johnston had disappeared from Patterson’s front. If the Federals were successful, he said, they would seize the Manassas Gap Railroad and prevent a junction of the Southern units. The army would advance at two o’clock the next morning. McDowell had no other choice—Forward to Richmond was a clarion call for action.¹⁰

Tyler and the other generals, however, were accurate in their assessment. Patterson, an encrusted old fossil, had failed miserably. When Beauregard had learned of the Union advance on July 16, he telegraphed Richmond for reinforcements. President Jefferson Davis ordered five regiments to Manassas and instructed Johnston to move there if he could elude Patterson. Johnston so baffled his opponent that Patterson retreated north as the Confederates hurried east. By July 20, three of Johnston’s brigades, using the railroad for the final leg, joined Beauregard. Another brigade was expected the next day. Together, Beauregard and Johnston counted roughly 33,000 troops to oppose McDowell’s 35,000. The two-day halt at Centreville for reconnaissance and resupply would be costly for the Federals. In fact, Beauregard issued orders for an assault on McDowell’s left flank for the morning of July 21.¹¹

During the day of July 20, McDowell asked the 4th Pennsylvania, whose ninety-day enlistments expired the next day, to extend them two weeks. A majority of men refused. A captain in the 4th Pennsylvania explained the regiment’s decision as the fact of the matter was, the men had been badly used. They had a right to their discharge. Their colonel, John F. Hartranft, stayed with the army and volunteered as an aide-de-camp on the staff of Colonel William Franklin. As the army marched toward battle the next morning, the Pennsylvanians left for Washington and home.¹²

The mood in the camps that night was one of both solemnity and confidence. Chaplains conducted religious services, and bands played sacred music. I pray, a sergeant confided in his journal, that I may have the strength & courage to carry me safely through or to die decently in a manner becoming an American soldier. Another soldier wrote to his parents, it will be a great battle the greatest yet God only knows how it will end and who amongst us will stand the contest God can only disside. Private George Rollins of the 3rd Maine told his father later, Troops never marched to battle more confident of victory than we.¹³

THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN or Manassas marked a passage for those who experienced it and for the entire country. Never before had so many Americans embraced such a storm. Never before had so many citizen soldiers faced combat’s terrible testing. And never again would so many go forth with such naive illusions of glory. On a hot July Sabbath, Americans glimpsed the outlines of a fearful future.

Irvin McDowell’s ambitious plan faltered from the outset. Daniel Tyler’s division started late and slowed the march of the flanking column, comprised of Hunter’s and Heintzelman’s troops. The men’s fatigue and lack of discipline compounded the difficulties. According to one of the soldiers, however, it was an impressive sight as the moonlight glinted off bayonets, looking like an immense silver sea serpent.¹⁴

It was past 9:30 A.M., hours behind schedule, before the van of Hunter’s division crossed at Sudley Ford. Colonel Ambrose Burnside’s brigade of Rhode Islanders, New Hampshiremen, and New Yorkers stepped off first, advancing against three Confederate brigades on Matthews Hill. We advanced double quick time yelling like so many devils, wrote corporal Samuel J. English of the 2nd Rhode Island. Their time had come, or as a lieutenant admitted to his wife afterward, I never thought I had the bravery to stand on the field of battle but I did.¹⁵

For more than an hour, Matthews Hill seethed with musketry and cannon fire. It was a whirlwind of bullets, claimed a Confederate. Hunter suffered a wound and relinquished command to Colonel Andrew Porter. Both sides clung to their lines, with charges and countercharges. Unlike the 4th Pennsylvania, the 71st New York, a three-month unit whose term of enlistment had expired on July 20, stood and fought. We would not turn back on eve of a battle, asserted one of them. Many of the Federals wore uniforms that were in part or entirely gray, which added to the confusion.¹⁶

Our men, stated one of Burnside’s soldiers, began to grow unsteady under the enemy’s fire. He blamed it on their commanders, who didn’t seem to know what to do. Porter asked for help, while Burnside reported that his men were nearly out of ammunition. McDowell, who had joined the flanking column, ordered both Heintzelman’s and Tyler’s divisions across the stream.¹⁷

William Franklin’s brigade arrived first, filing into line on Matthews Hill. A week earlier Franklin had written to his wife, This is not precisely what I enlisted for [commanding volunteer troops], but I suppose it will all come right in the end. But it must not have seemed so to him as his brigade marched onto the field. The 5th and 11th Massachusetts, while still in column, opened fire, killing and wounding some of their own members.¹⁸

Hunter’s regiments stabilized the Union line, and the Federals pressed forward. On their left, Colonel William Sherman’s brigade, wading across Bull Run at an unnamed ford discovered that morning, closed on the Confederates’ right flank. The Southerners abandoned Matthews Hill, spilled across Warrenton Turnpike, and fled up and over the crest of Henry House Hill, where they began to rally upon Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson’s five Virginia regiments. Confederate brigadier Barnard B. Bee, trying to re-form his ranks, shouted: Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer! Follow me! Upon Jackson’s line in a pine thicket on the reverse slope of the hill, the Rebels prepared to make a stand.¹⁹

It was not yet noon when the Yankees cleared Matthews Hill. Victory appeared at hand as perhaps 18,000 Federals were south of Bull Run with only Confederate artillery in view on Henry House Hill. One coordinated assault would surely seize the height and sweep the Rebels from the field. All they needed were orders and leadership. Instead, McDowell sat passively, issuing no instructions for two hours. It would be left to his subordinate commanders and the men in the ranks. On a broad rise, around the home of eighty-five-year-old Judith Henry, for whose family the hill was named, the outcome of the battle would be decided.²⁰

Whatever doubts the West Pointers and Regular Army officers had before the battle about the volunteers’ willingness to fight and to die for the cause should have been dispelled this Sunday afternoon on the slopes and crest of Henry House Hill. Time and again, regiments—sent in piecemeal—ascended the rise and gave of themselves. The struggle for Matthews Hill did not compare to the bloodletting on the land of the Henry family. A Virginian with Jackson spoke for thousands on both sides when he wrote his wife three days later: I never expected to see you again. The balls was falling around me like hail and I don’t see how I ever did escape for the men was falling around me like cornstalks.²¹

The 27th New York, followed by the 8th New York State Militia and 14th Brooklyn, went in first. They drove toward the hill’s northeast crest and a small house owned by a family named Robinson. Confederate cannon and South Carolina infantrymen blasted them back in disorder. Behind them came Colonel Erasmus Keyes’s 2nd Maine and 3rd Connecticut. One howl passed along the line, boasted a Maine corporal, & the bold boys of the 2d Me. dashed forward like lightning firing as fast as possible. The New Englanders passed the Robinson house and faltered before enemy fire. The volleys tore into the Yankee ranks, and as Keyes reported, exposure to it of five minutes would have annihilated my whole line. Isolated, with no support in view, he ordered a retreat.²²

With the repulse of Keyes’s troops, a brief lull ensued—an indescribable calm, in the words of a Northerner. McDowell then directed his chief of artillery, Major William F. Barry, to send two batteries to the open crest of Henry House Hill. Barry selected Captain James B. Ricketts’s Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery and Captain Charles Griffin’s Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery. When the captains received the order, they protested it, arguing that artillery would not be safe there without ample infantry support. The order stood, and the crews rolled forward. For the next two hours these eleven cannon would stand at the center of a maelstrom.²³

The Union artillerists dueled with their Confederate counterparts for more than thirty minutes before infantry support arrived. On they came—the red-shirted men of the 1st Minnesota; the 11th New York Fire Zouaves, whose members shouted Ellsworth! in honor of their martyred colonel; the red-legged Chasseurs of the 14th Brooklyn, whose major implored them to recollect your uniform, Brooklyn, and the Flag of your country; and a battalion of United States Marines. Before long, the crest of the hill flashed again with cannon fire and musketry.²⁴

The 1st Minnesota and Fire Zouaves deployed to the right of the batteries and advanced toward the woods held by the Rebels. A volley from Jackson’s Virginians staggered the Federals. It was a most damnable thing leading men in to such a place, grumbled a Minnesotan. Back they went, as if swept back by a tornado. On the hill’s slope, Confederate cavalrymen, under Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, plunged into the fleeing ranks, scattering the infantrymen. No regiments lost more men killed than the Minnesotans and the Fire Zouaves.²⁵

Griffin now shifted two cannon farther to the right, and the combat escalated. The 33rd Virginia stormed out of the woods, overrunning the isolated guns. Within minutes, the 14th Brooklyn wrenched the cannon from the Virginians and kept going toward Jackson’s line. Three times the Federals charged across the open ground into a wall of musketry and canister. They came within a few feet of the Rebel cannon during their final attack before being swept off the hill. The Brooklyn men had redeemed themselves after breaking earlier.²⁶

From the pine thicket, a yell cascaded across the plateau, followed by a surging line of Confederates. Jackson’s men advanced directly toward the Union line of cannon, withstood a wave of canister, and seized the guns, clubbing and shooting down the crews. Once again, the Southerners held the crest of Henry House Hill. From the low ground along Warrenton Pike, however, appeared more Union regiments. Men from Michigan, Massachusetts, and New York marched up the slope.²⁷

The struggle for the Union artillery pieces took on a hellish symmetry—a back and a forth, an ebb and a flow, a maiming and a killing. The Northerners climbed up the hillside, were beaten back, and tried again. The carnage was fearful, wrote a Virginian. Colonel Orlando Willcox fell with a wound and would be captured, along with battery commander Ricketts, who lay bleeding among his cannon. Watching the fighting, McDowell ordered in Sherman’s brigade.²⁸

The 13th New York led Sherman’s attack, trailed closely by the 2nd Wisconsin, whose members emitted an Indian war whoop as they charged. The Wisconsin men went in without a field officer. Their colonel, S. Park Coon, whom the troops considered to be a great drunken bloat, was serving as a volunteer aide on Sherman’s staff. The regiment’s lieutenant colonel and major had fled the battlefield earlier and reportedly were the first two officers to reach Washington that night.²⁹

While the New Yorkers tried valiantly to recapture the cannon and failed, the Wisconsin troops were caught in a swirl of musketry and artillery fire. Oh! It was dreadful, claimed a captain, and I cannot see how not only myself, but any of us, escaped with life. Suddenly, from the rear, their comrades in the 69th and 79th New York mistakenly triggered volleys into the gray-uniformed Federals. A private in the regiment described the fury as the most hellish shower of bullets you can imagine. Wounded men pleaded to be shot to end their agony.³⁰

Like the other units before them, the two New York regiments encountered a severe fire, in Sherman’s words, recoiled, and charged again. Colonel James Cameron, brother of Secretary of War Simon Cameron, died at the head of his Highlanders of the 79th New York. Captain Thomas Meagher of the 69th New York twice rallied the men, imploring them to do so in the name of Ireland. Joined by the 38th New York, the 69th New York retook Ricketts’s guns and began rolling them off the crest.³¹

While Sherman’s troops fought for the guns, McDowell sent Colonel Oliver Howard’s brigade beyond the Confederates’ left flank to Chinn Ridge, several hundred yards west of the Henry house. Howard’s New Englanders—2nd Vermont, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Maine—opposed two Southern brigades and a pair of South Carolina regiments. It was an uneven struggle, but the Yankees fought bravely and stood their ground manfully, until Howard ordered one wing of a regiment to change the position. His instructions, however, were misinterpreted as an order for a retreat by all of the troops. The Rebels pressed their rear, and by the time the Yankees reached Warrenton Turnpike, they had disintegrated into a panic stricken mob.³²

To the east, the 8th and 18th Virginia swept across Henry House Hill, driving off the 38th and 69th New York and recapturing the Union cannon. The entire Union force south of Bull Run was now in flight toward Stone Bridge, Sudley Ford, and the farmer’s ford used earlier by Sherman’s and Keyes’s brigades. Until then, wrote McDowell’s chief of staff of the Federals, they had fought wonderfully well for raw troops.³³

Several factors contributed to the ensuing rout—the contagious nature of a panic, the exhaustion of the troops, the inability of inexperienced officers to stem the tide, the Confederate pursuit, and the closing of the bridge over Cub Run by an overturned wagon. Undoubtedly, before most of the units reached Bull Run, it was a scene of confusion and disorder. Regimental and brigade organization had disappeared. Men discarded equipment and arms. As groups of men tried to rally and to re-form ranks, the strong current of fleeing soldiers swept them along. The plain was covered with retreating groups, reported McDowell, and they seemed to infect those with whom they came in contact.³⁴

The rout degenerated into a frenzied mob of men when a Confederate artillery round caused a wagon to upset on the Warrenton Turnpike